Letter to Liberals: Liberalism, Environmentalism, and Economic Growth (Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures Book 30)

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.​

The task of aligning the interests of liberals and environmentalists is not an easy one. Aside from the fact that the former focus primarily on social concerns and the latter on ecological, there is a fundamental split between them on the question of economic growth. For most mainstream liberal thinkers, economic growth is a necessary ingredient for a positive future, holding the potential to lift people out of poverty, but environmentalists argue increasingly that continuing economic growth will not be ecologically sustainable much longer. Despite this schism, James Gustave Speth argues, liberals and environmentalists are mutually reliant. In “a land of pervasive economic insecurity and stark inequality,” making real environmental progress will be politically impossible. And the effects of climate change are likely to have the harshest effects on the world’s poor. Thus, environmental campaigns cannot succeed without the strengthening of liberalism, nor can liberal goals be met without progress on the environmental front. Therefore, Speth calls for liberals and environmentalists to set aside their ideological differences and work towards common goals.